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By the time they reached the Cain home, she was almost relaxed, but when the door opened, she found it was more than just Lucy and her father awaiting them.
Gulliver Wilson was there as well, and his wife, a sharp-nosed woman with icy eyes. They both stared at Kate with gleaming interest as everyone was ushered toward the dining room. Mr. Cain made a joke about their lateness, observing that it must have been a happy reunion.
Kate avoided speaking to any of them, even Lucy, until they were all seated.
“Well, Mr. Hamilton,” Gulliver Wilson drawled, “I can assure you that we’ve all been looking after your lovely wife.”
“Thank you, Mr. Wilson,” Gerard said without a hint of deceit in his expression. “I can’t pretend I haven’t worried.”
“I am surprised you would send her ahead on her own. . . .”
Gerard made a dismissive noise and brought the soup spoon to his mouth without responding. Mr. Wilson looked irritated.
“The shop is quite popular!” Lucy said into the silence. “What did you think of it?”
But Gulliver Wilson was determined to make trouble. “Your friend Mr. York was especially attentive to Mrs. Hamilton,” he said. Kate felt her face flush. Even Mr. Cain could not miss the implication and frowned in Wilson’s direction.
“York?” Gerard said.
“Yes,” Wilson said with a smile. “Mr. Aidan York of London. He visited several times. Said he was an associate of yours.”
Gerard’s gaze slid to her. “Yes, of course. I hadn’t thought he’d made it back to England yet.”
“You’ll be happy to know he’s been here for months,” Wilson said, his sly grin widening.
Lucy glared at him. “How is your brother, Mr. Wilson?” she asked loudly.
Wilson coughed and blustered, but Gerard’s eyes were still on Kate. She tried to keep her expression flat, but she couldn’t keep the color from her cheeks. She wanted to leap over the table and stab Mr. Wilson with her fork. She wanted to jump up and scream at them all that Gerard was not her husband and she was free to do as she pleased. But she only sat there, eating slowly so that her knotted stomach wouldn’t betray her.
Lucy’s eyes were wide and liquid with worry, but Kate avoided her gaze. She did not like lying to her friend, but she had no choice.
The tension remained all through dinner, with Gulliver Wilson continuously hinting that she’d been a less-than-perfect wife during her stay in Hull. No one suggested they linger over port. Indeed, Mr. Cain seemed eager to see everyone out the door. Gerard took her arm too roughly, and soon enough she was whisked away.
“You are happy here?” he hissed into her ear. “Because of the shop? Because you enjoy slaving away like a merchant’s wife? By God, you are a damned liar, is what you are.”
“I am not.”
“Who is he?”
“Gulliver Wilson despises me. He is goading you, hoping I’ll get a beating.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
Kate hesitated, but finally his fingers dug so deep into her arm that she couldn’t stay quiet. “Mr. York is an importer, nothing more.”
“Yet you told people he was a friend of your husband.”
She swallowed hard, focusing on the stones of the street. “What does that matter? I was trying to shut that awful Mr. Wilson up. I don’t even have a husband.”
He didn’t say another word, and she thought he’d left the matter behind, but when they reached the shop, he locked the door behind him and threw the key across the room so hard that it cracked against a bin. “I actually thought you were telling the truth. That you wanted to be here, alone, at peace.”
She hurried toward the stairs. He tried to grab at her arm, but she scooted around him and stormed up the steps. “I’ve done nothing wrong, just as I did nothing wrong in Ceylon.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re returning with me. Whoever this man is, he can rot for all I care.”
She paced across her small parlor, back and forth, while Gerard watched her. “I am free, and you will not take that from me!”
“We shall see about that,” he growled.
